ABSTRACT
Nonverbal communication has been an area of overwhelming research, continually opening new avenues for exploration. This paper examines how Indian films and web series portray the lower-class people, specifically the domestic helps, through nonverbal communication. The study focuses on the various nonverbal aspects of these portrayals to explore how class is visually captured and encoded by the media. Rather than focusing on aspirational narratives, it highlights the ordinary, everyday lives of the lower-class people. Characters like Ratna in Is Love Enough? Sir, Sudha in Lust Stories (Zoya Akhtar segment), Mala in Dabba Cartel, and Meeta in Hindi Medium are analyzed for how they depict their class through the loud silence of the body. The paper, through Guerrero et al.‘s framework, Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus and Erving Goffman's performance theory, seeks to understand why the nonverbals of the lower class are so typically represented in the visual media and how the social hierarchy gets quietly communicated through the body.
